Donald Quataert

Donald George Quataert (September 10, 1941 – February 10, 2011) was a historian at Binghamton University. He taught courses on Middle East/Ottoman history, with an interest in labor, social and economics, during the early and modern periods. He also provided training in the reading of Ottoman archival sources.[1]

He received his undergraduate degree from Boston University in 1966 (Phi Beta Kappa), and then his Masters from Harvard in 1968. Subsequently, he received his doctorate from UCLA in 1973.

In 2006, he published an article reviewing Donald Bloxham's book The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. In his review, Quataert stated that he used the word genocide because "to do otherwise... runs the risk of suggesting denial of the massive and systematic atrocities" and that "accumulating evidence is indicating that the killings were centrally planned by Ottoman government officials and systematically carried out by their underlings". The review article challenged what Quataert termed "the Ottomanist wall of silence"[2] on the issue.[3][4][5]

Weeks later, Quataert resigned from the position of the chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of Turkish Studies, which he had held since 2001. Quataert stated that he was forced to resign due to the pressure of the Turkish ambassador Nabi Şensoy, and a number of other board members resigned shortly thereafter. Mervat Hatem, the director of Middle East Studies Association, sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Turkey Erdogan, criticizing the threats of Turkish officials to stop funding the Institute if Quataert did not retract his statements. Hatem stated that such threats went against academic freedom and that "the resignations are in contradiction with those many requests to leave the discussion and the assessment of the Armenian Genocide to the academia that Turkey has been making."[6][7][8]

  1. ^ Binghamton University Archived 2016-08-13 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ^ Quataert, Donald (2006). "The Massacres of Ottoman Armenians and the Writing of Ottoman History". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 37 (2): 249–259. doi:10.1162/jinh.2006.37.2.249. ISSN 0022-1953. JSTOR 4139548. S2CID 145622783.
  3. ^ Gutman, David (2015). "Ottoman Historiography and the End of the Genocide Taboo: Writing the Armenian Genocide into Late Ottoman History". Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. 2 (1): 167. doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.2.1.167.
  4. ^ Erbal, Ayda (2015). "The Armenian Genocide, AKA the Elephant in the Room". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 47 (4): 783–790. doi:10.1017/S0020743815000987. S2CID 162834123.
  5. ^ Eissenstat, Howard (2014). "Children of Özal: The New Face of Turkish Studies". Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. 1 (1–2): 23–35. doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.1.1-2.23. ISSN 2376-0702.
  6. ^ Eissenstat 2014, pp. 25–26.
  7. ^ David Holthouse. Institute of Turkish Studies Chair Forced Out For Rebuking Genocide Deniers Archived 21 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Southern Poverty Law Center, 6 June 2008
  8. ^ Susan Kinzie. Board Members Resign to Protest Chair's Ousting. The Washington Post. 5 July 2008